


the ashes yet remain

by zhelaniye



Category: Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: M/M, Mild Gore, Non-Linear Narrative, Polyamorous Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28935372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhelaniye/pseuds/zhelaniye
Summary: For all his faults, Dockson was a practical man, and a keen tactician. He knew when a fight was sure to be lost before it started, and he knew how to extract himself from this kind of situation without leaving a trace, which had ensured his survival in the deadly skaa underworld on more than one occasion.But not when it came to Kelsier.
Relationships: Dockson/Kelsier (Mistborn)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	the ashes yet remain

The Pits of Hathsin lie in the horizon, like a black hole sunken deep into the hard, frozen ground, that only the faint sound of struggling and weakened moans manage to escape. 

Dockson sits amongst the mists, like he had seen him do so many times before, the man whose echo brought him out here, braving the fiendish terrors that plagued the skaa legends with a stiff spine and his hands clenched in his pockets. But not as uncaring and unafraid as he had always been. Never like him.

_ You cursed fool _ , he thinks inwardly, and the bitterness of his thoughts leaves an unpleasant aftertaste in his throat, like swallowed bile.

He has come here every night for the past month. His steps leave the darkened gates of Luthadel with an iron will each night, and each night they falter when the faint lights of the Pits are faintly visible in the horizon. 

He won’t ever get closer than this. He knows that now, just as he knew it the first day he scurried away from the city, hidden and inconspicuous in his skaa clothing, blending in with the workers that drilled incessantly outside of the wall under the ever-falling ash.

For all his faults, Dockson was a practical man, and a keen tactician. He knew when a fight was sure to be lost before it started, and he knew how to extract himself from this kind of situation without leaving a trace, which had ensured his survival in the deadly skaa underworld on more than one occasion. 

But not when it came to Kelsier. 

That infuriating man, with his blond hair that seemed perpetually unstained by the soot and ash, and that grin that had seemed incapable of fading, would be his downfall. 

Kelsier had predicted this himself, many years ago, when the pain of the plantation had been fresh in both Dockson’s mind and body, and the uphill climb of building himself a name amongst the thieving crews had taken up every second of his life. There had rarely been a day since then where Dockson had not thought about that moment where a young thief had approached him, sauntering into the room he was in with a crinkle in his eyes that seemed almost obscene in the downtrodden skaa slums, and had introduced himself with a flourish. 

If he had refused back then to join into his plan, perhaps, he wouldn’t have found himself here, at the mercy of the mistwraiths, staring into the horizon and feeling the temperatures drop lower and lower as winter approached. But he had been young and unspeakably bored, and Kelsier had always been just enticing enough and brilliant enough to tempt him, to make him want to quench the thirst of the side of him that longed for a challenge.

He could not ascertain the purpose of his nightly trips, even to himself. He had daydreamed about closing the miles that separated him from the wretched place and sink underneath the ground, pulling Kelsier back up with him, but he knew those thoughts to be no more than foolish hope that refused to die. 

In truth, the black walls of the city felt oppressive now, as if it was difficult to breathe within them from a strange pressure in the air. As if Kelsier’s absence was a physical weight that threatened to fall on Dockson’s shoulders and scatter his remains over the soot-covered cobblestones for the skaa and noblemen alike to step onto without a second glance. 

_ Kelsier is probably dead by now anyway _ , he thinks, and does not pretend to ignore the sharp agonizing thud inside his chest at the mere thought.  _ Not even he can survive in the Pits. _

He wonders, standing in the swirling mists under the dark sky from where the ash kept falling, why those words sounded empty to his ears. 

When dawn finally looms on the horizon, ready to doom them all to live through yet another day, he drags himself back to the capital and tries, once again, not to turn to scrutinize the shadows in the distance in search for something he can not name.

…………….

Dockson digs the heel of his boots into the ground, making ash and dust grind under it in an uncharacteristic display of impatience, and fixes the buttons on his coat for lack of a better thing to do with his hands when he hears a faint sound behind him, barely more than a breeze. 

“Good afternoon,” the newcomer says in a low voice all of a sudden as soon as Dockson spins around with a start when he feels his presence. 

Whispers had been piling up steadily amongst the skaa for many weeks, whispers of a man wandering the rural plantations leaving nothing but a trail of noble blood behind him as he circled the capital, slowly, like a hunter. Whispers of a man of extraordinary power and resolve. The Survivor, they called him. 

It had been Breeze the one to tell him, one afternoon. 

“The Survivor of Hathsin,” he had said, and Dockson had had to look away from his piercing clear eyes.

“Don’t play games with me, Breeze,” he’d replied.

Breeze had tapped his fingers against the side of his wine glass, impatiently, and leaned forward, fixing Dockson with a hard stare, the sincere one he so seldom wore. 

“Listen to me, Dox,” he’d said, “if anyone were to survive that place, it would be him. You know this.”

And then the murders in the plantations had stopped for two weeks, enough time to make most of the whispers die out, enough time for the skaa to bow their heads again and turn their attention towards the mills they worked, and the streets they swept, and the hard stones they mined. And Dockson had forced resignation to fall onto his hopeful heart once again, fought the urge to go out and fruitlessly scout the nights as he had done a year before, the month after they had taken Kelsier, and focused on his work with a single-minded dedication that had been almost enough to put Breeze’s words out of his mind. 

That was until he’d found the note on his desk. It had appeared in Dockson’s hide-out five nights ago, unsigned and adorned with a handwriting elaborate to the point of pretension, cryptically pointing out a time and a place in the easternmost area of the city, deep into the skaa slums, where even the obligators would venture only if circumstances forced them to. 

And now there he stood, in an abandoned back alley in the slums that smelled of rotten meat, sewage and musky earth, staring at a lanky figure enveloped in a mistcloak that stalked, slowly, out of the shadows, moving with an elegance and a confidence so utterly familiar that it made Dockson’s chest burn and the air kick out of his lungs. 

“Kelsier,” he whispers, and he relishes in the way the name felt on his mouth, a name that had gone unsaid for too long, a name that he thought lost forever to him. 

Kelsier pulls his hood back and his face shines under the relentless starlight that adorned the night sky, far above the swirling mists. 

He was pale and thinner than he’d ever been, there was a red thick scar peeking out of his clothes that stopped where his shoulder met his neck, his eye bags were prominent to the point of being worrying and he looked utterly exhausted and spent, ready to trip over his own feet and fall over. But his lips were curled into a lopsided smile, and his eyes crinkled in mirth when they set themselves upon Dockson’s face. 

“Kelsier,” he says again, like a prayer and a curse all at the same time, and he’d barely had the time to finish mouthing his name when the blond man closes the distance between them and crashes against his body, with a strength unnatural for a man who had lost as much weight as he had.

And Dockson had grieved, had endured the pain of this man’s absence every second of consciousness every day since that fateful night, a year and two months ago, had learned to ignore it as it resonated within him with every beat of his heart. But it isn’t n’t until Kelsier’s mouth collides against his, hungry, demanding, desperate and almost terrified of being separated again that he realizes how unspeakably, how unbearably much he had missed him.

Kelsier pulls apart after what feels like a year and barely more than a second at the same time, and when Dockson sees him drag his eyes away from his mouth towards his eyes with some difficulty the urge to pull him in and kiss him is nearly overpowering.

“Your beard still scratches my cheeks,” Kelsier says, out of everything else he could have said, and his voice sounds creaky with misuse but the characteristic undercurrent of playfulness is there for him to hear and relish on, laced with wonder. Dockson laughs, loudly and freely, the sound traveling through the empty streets, completely unfamiliar in this side of the city. 

Kelsier kisses him again. 

There is much Dockson wants to know - how he had survived, what he had done, where he had been, what had been done to him. If he would stay this time. But words and doubts flee his mind for the first time way too long, leaving only a peaceful, content static that fill his senses. 

His hands roam Kelsier’s back, scrambling for purchase, attempting to pull him closer, to breach the separation between their bodies as they kiss, marvelling at how Kelsier’s body and movements, although changed, are still wildly familiar. 

“Come home with me,” he asks between kisses, as their mouths seek one another with desperation.

“I was just about to ask,” Kelsier mutters against the rough skin of the shorter man’s cheeks. 

The mist swirls around them, engulfing them completely. There are many questions unanswered and things yet undone between them, there is so much Dockson needs to do and know. But Kelsier had crawled back from the dead to him, and was kissing him fervently. He could wait a few more hours.

  
  


…………….

  
  


Dockson remembers the first time he heard Kelsier speak, truly speak, after that initial conversation where he’d detailed the time and dates for a meeting. 

“Why would this interest me?” Dockson had asked then. “I don’t even know who you are.”

It was a lie, and Kelsier smiled as if he had known that. Everyone knew who he was. Kelsier the thief, whose name crossed the lips of every skaa in amusement, every crew leader in envy and every nobleman in wrath. The only man in recent memory to have successfully scammed obligators in person. 

“Just come to the meeting and see us work,” Kelsier had replied.

In truth, Dockson had been tempted, just for the slightest second, to avoid it. The man’s ego certainly had seemed big enough that it had seemed a satisfying thought. But his curiosity and the necessity to seize the opportunity of having been spotted by the greatest crew leader in Luthadel had won over in the end without much of a struggle.

So he’d gone to the meeting, and it had been there when he’d met Marsh and Mare. And also where he’d heard Kelsier speak.

He outlined the plan, helping himself with a blackboard and broad hand gestures with his charcoal-stained fingers, and Dockson had known from the first two minutes that there would be no walking out on this job. The blond man, usually charming and seemingly carefree, transformed itself into a thing of wonder, almost frantically brilliant in his scheming and conviction, and utterly beautiful. 

Dockson had said yes and, as he predicted, there had been no walking out. Not when the work on his desk had piled up enough to keep his nose buried in his affairs for hours on end until Kelsier fished him out and fetched two mugs of ale for them and sat him down in the kitchen. Not when he’d seen Kelsier transform into his made-up persona, his usual self buried under his disguise with sharp efficiency, and he realized he’d only begun to scratch the surface of that man’s capabilities. And not when the money had come in without a single hitch on the plan, enough money to sustain themselves with ease for at least three or four years but Kelsier had immediately turned towards him with a genuine, wide smile and said “I have an idea”. 

“I see my little brother has found a new person to lure into his madness,” Marsh had said with a raised eyebrow when he saw Dockson sitting at the meeting of Kelsier’s new job, barely a week after the previous one had ended.

Dockson had barely talked to Kelsier’s brother before, who was always too focused, too intense and too busy. They were alone now, however, so he took the opportunity and turned towards him.

“Your little brother knows how to make himself convincing,” he replied.

Marsh produced a small smile that was more like a grimace. “That, he does,” he said. 

Dockson studied the man briefly as he sat down. He was tall, even taller than Kelsier, and far wider, almost bulky, far more than the regular skaa. He kept his hair trimmed short and a short but bushy, dark beard obscured the shape of his jaw, but the similarities between him and his brother were startling. 

They couldn’t have been more different, however. Kelsier was almost insultingly beautiful and seemed to ooze passion, whereas Marsh was strong and intense. Dockson had little trouble understanding why he was known as Ironeyes. 

“You don’t really get along, do you?” Dockson observed. 

Marsh’s mouth twisted in a small, bitter grimace. 

“He’s my brother,” he replied. He offered nothing more so Dockson let the subject drop.

The silence didn’t stretch for too long, because the door opened all of a sudden and two figures strode inside the room, one short and graceful and the other tall and flamboyant. 

“Mare,” said Marsh, with a tone way different from the gruff, dry one Dockson had heard from him previously.

She spared a glance for him but just barely before beelining towards Marsh with a smile, and quickly becoming engulfed in quiet conversation with the taller man. Marsh’s shoulders leaned towards her as he crooked his head uncomfortably to talk to her, and in that moment a lot of things started to make sense inside Dockson’s mind.

“You’re here,” Kelsier said, paying no heed to the other two people present and fixing his warm blue eyes on Dockson, who would have punched himself for the way his heart jumped inside his chest. “I had hoped you would be,” he said, and he sounded sincere, and pleased, and Dockson smiled.

“Why would I miss it?”

  
  


He thinks about it now, about the firsts months of his acquaintance with Kelsier, about meeting Mare and Marsh, as his tired, older body rests on the creaking bed on one of his safe houses.

The room around him is utterly dark save from the faint light that a half-consumed candle sheds from where it rests atop the window frame, and the silence is only broken by his and Kelsier’s breathing.

Kelsier is a force of life, that much he’d known almost since he had first set his eyes upon him. He’s always brimming with movement, an energy he has to let out or it will crackle out of his skin, both awake and asleep. 

He’d always been a restless sleeper, which had annoyed Dox at first and endeared him later. He shuffled and huffed his way through the night, and his body shed an almost unbearable heat under the covers, useful during the winter but excruciating during the summer nights. Dockson had learned how to sleep by his side without being awoken by roaming feet settling between his thighs or kicked out of bed by a blur of blond hair and flailing arms. 

Now, Dockson lies awake and scrutinizes the darkness again, watching the outline of Kelsier’s body by his side, his chest moving at the rhythm of his labored and uneven breathing, drinking in every little noise that he made, which were so utterly familiar, so known to him, that it made something on the back of his chest buzz. 

It had been two months since the mists had brought Kelsier back to him from where no one had ever returned, alive and whole, and he still lies awake every night before he allows sleep to take him, observing him, feeling the weight of his head on his chest and the slight tingle in his skin where Kelsier’s damp breath is pressed against it. 

Kelsier sleeps differently now, however He talks in what is often a series of unintelligible sounds and mumbled words, pressed against the pillow and the hair of Dockson’s chest like a secret he’s entrusting him to keep. Dockson’s chest burns most nights with rage and grief and incomprehension at seeing his lover, who always seems brighter and bigger than life, reduced to that state.

The third night they’d slept side by side after Kelsier’s return had been one none of them would soon forget. Dockson had been half asleep, almost in a state of vigil, a force of habit acquired in his line of work that he had some difficulty letting go of, when he’d felt Kelsier begin to whimper lowly, almost in a whisper, but with a growing desperation that made the other man’s skin crawl.

“Kell?” 

There had been no reply, but the blond man’s breath was beginning to grow more erratic and shorter, and his scarred hands shot out from under the covers and gripped Dockson’s arms with force, almost beseechingly.

“Please,” he whispered, and there was an urgency, a grief in his voice, that made the shorter man sit up in the bed that creaked with effort under their movements and move to put his hands around Kelsier’s face.

“Kell,” he said more forcefully, and he obtained no response. “Kelsier!”

Kelsier’s eyes shot open and suddenly Dockson felt the grip around his arms turn painful and he was shot backwards. The window frame and the bed creaked in restraint, as if opposing forces were pulling on them, and Kelsier stood in the middle of the room, with his chest heaving and his hands clenched into fists that rested at his sides, eyes wide open but unseeing. 

He seemed lost inside whatever had transpired in his dream still, and Dockson slowly got up, making sure not to startle him.

“Kelsier,” he whispered. “Kell, look at me.”

The blond man did and Dockson watched as comprehension dawned into his face, wiping out the burning hatred and the horror of the remnants of his dream. And then his face fell. It was as if the facade he had built around himself and clang to as if it was a burning iron crumbled around him, falling helplessly to his feet, and all that was left under the Survivor of Hathsin was, plain and simply, Kelsier.

“Dox,” he whispered, moving in shaky feet towards him.

Dockson extended his arms and Kelsier fell into his embrace, all the tension leaving his body, and they sat like that on the cold floor for a long time, in complete silence, as Dockson idly stroked some of the rebel strands of Kelsier’s hair that curled around his shoulders. 

“They killed her, Dox,” he says all of a sudden, and Dockson cranes his neck to look at the blond man from where he’s resting pressed against his chest. 

“I know,” he replies.

“They killed her in front of me. And I watched it. I just watched it all.”

“You couldn’t have done anything”.

Kelsier clenches his jaw, and something burns within his eyes, something that wasn’t there before but now it seems inseparable from the warmth and playfulness that usually sit there, something that’s starting to become familiar to Dockson. Rage. Unquenchable, cold, solidified rage.

Kelsier extends his hands and the meagre starlight reflects on his scars - long, jagged things that swirl around his arms in irregular patterns and mark him.

“But I can now,” he says. “I can now.”

  
  


…………….

  
  


It didn’t take long for Dockson and Kelsier to discover they worked incredibly well together. Kelsier’s wild planning and grandiose ideas took solid form under Dockson’s minutious scrutiny and the keen eye he kept for details and loose threads. Kelsier improvised and waltzed his way into anyone’s plans, wreaking havoc wherever he went, but Dockson soon learned how to anticipate that and plan ahead for Kelsier’s unpredictability, turning their alliance into a well-oiled and sharply efficient machine and, soon, into a rapidly blooming friendship. 

Dockson’s presence soon became a given in Kelsier’s life, and that’s how he found himself, deep into the late hours of the night, sitting on the floor and clutching a cup of expensive wine they’d scammed off one of the rivaling thieving crews recently, watching Kelsier doubling over himself as he laughed at something Dockson had said.

Kelsier’s laugh was loud and joyful, like everything else about him, and seemed to crash with everything around him as if he was trying to subvert every last stone in Luthadel and bend it to his will by his presence alone. 

_ He could do it if he wanted to _ , Dockson thinks, and in his slightly inebriated state he sees it all laid in front of his eyes like a prophecy. Kelsier, glorious and beautiful under the red skies, with formless masses around him reaching towards him, clamoring, chanting, begging with a fierce adoration that bordered on desperation. 

Kelsier seemed a man who could challenge the entire world most days, if he had wanted to. But Dockson had been allowed to see beyond that. He had been allowed to see the man whose voice sounds like gravel in the morning and who looks miserable at least until a few hours after sunrise, blinking the sleep out of his eyes with difficulty. He had seen the man who bites his lower lip with a frown until it’s reddened when something unexpected contrariates his plan. He had seen a man who blushes when he drinks too much wine and laughs at Mare’s poor jokes louder than anyone should.

And Dockson is a practical man, a brutally honest one unless the situation requires otherwise, and a stubbornly thorough one. The things he knows, he knows them firmly. So when Kelsier puts a hand on his thigh to steady himself and leaves it there for a few seconds afterwards, and when he can still feel the memory of his palm on his skin as if it was a scorching iron brand, he immediately understands.

_ Oh,  _ he thought, as he distantly registered Kelsier’s eyes dropping to his lips, slowly but inexorably, as if in a daze.  _ Of course _ .

Kelsier’s hand slowly placed itself back on Dockson’s knee and when he looked up he saw the other man’s long luscious locks in his periphery as he got closer to him.

He kissed Kelsier at exactly the same time Kelsier kissed him. It was a searing kiss, an all-consuming one, with Kelsier’s mouth open to his and pliant, and Dockson’s hands immediately finding the purchase on the other man’s shoulders and clenching into claws on the well-defined muscle he found there.

For a while, he was lost in it. In the absurdity of having Kelsier sitting on his lap, his long fingers digging into his beard as he kissed him hungrily, his own fingers alternating between entangling themselves on Kelsier’s hair and tugging on his shirt - there, in Marsh’s hideout of all places, well after the mists come out, and slightly drunk on a discarded wine now spilling its contents onto the cobblestones unattended. 

Then a thought made its way through the pleasant buzz on Dockson’s brain just as he bit Kelsier’s lower lip and felt the other man shiver slightly between his arms in response.

“Mare?”, he gasped, pulling back with his last ounce of willpower, enough so that Kelsier’s mouth wouldn’t find his immediately and pull him back under. 

“I asked,” Kelsier replied, and brought his lips closer to his again, partially open and glistening in the low light their oil lamp produced, but waiting for Dockson to close the distance, asking his permission.

Dockson’s heart clenched at the sight, and at the raw sincerity that Kelsier’s stubborn cheerfulness hid. He was earnest, and he was loyal, and he was beautiful, and he had asked about this. The idea dawned onto Dockson all of a sudden that Kelsier had wanted this before the wine and the heat of the moment had taken command of his actions. He had wanted  _ him _ .

He did not break the kiss when it started again, and neither did Kelsier. Not when they dragged themselves towards the bedroom in a flailing mess of limbs and partially discarded clothing, and not when they fell upon the mattress, Kelsier’s lean body a comfortable weight upon Dockson’s chest for his hands to wander and explore. 

The night stretched around them into the early hours of dawn and the retreating of the mists found their bodies still intertwined. Dockson laid with his eyes open and glancing unseeingly at the ceiling, his left hand idly stroking Kelsier’s now sweaty and completely disarrayed hair as the other man drooled on his chest, fast asleep.

Dockson’s back felt uncomfortable from the presence of Kelsier’s arms locked around his torso even in his sleep, his lips and skin buzzed lowly in all the places the blond man had touched him and he felt a bone-deep tiredness that almost ached. But Kelsier’s chest was rising and falling calmly by his side, in his arms, and he had no intention to sleep yet. Not while he could still feel his breath on his neck, soft and warm.

He would fall in love with this man unless he retreated in that moment, irrevocably so. He knew that now, as certain as he knew the mists would prey upon the land tomorrow come nightfall.

He never did retreat in the end.

  
  


……………………..

The erratic sounds of Kelsier’s feet tapping against the floor is the only thing that can be heard in the room. The blond man is leaning against the doorframe, staring at Dockson with his eyebrow raised and the corner of his lip bitten between his front teeth, a gesture that Dox had learned after so many years that meant he was trying to stop himself from fidgeting even more than he already was. 

“Okay,” Kelsier said, ever the impatient. “Say it.”

“What do you want me to say, Kell?” he replies, and Kelsier stops for a moment to look at him.

He had expected frustration, anger perhaps. But the quiet tiredness in Dockson, the almost palpable sadness in the softness of his voice, had been unexpected and far worse.

Kelsier moves towards the table Dockson is sitting at, lounging back in his chair with his arms crossed and staring right through Kelsier in that characteristic way of his that felt as if it could pry every single secret from his mind and strip his soul naked.

“Dox-” he starts softly, and then stops, unsure as to how to continue.

He wouldn’t do Dockson the disservice of apologizing, not when both of them knew he didn’t mean it, when both of them knew he’d do it again. 

Kelsier speaks again after a few seconds. “I needed to know what was in there. I needed to see.” 

Dockson nods, and his voice is still low and open, but firm when he speaks. 

“I know, Kelsier. I understand.”

And he did. Kelsier could see it in his eyes, the resignation, the grim acceptance. Even when he’d been angry, when Sazed had dragged an unconscious, bleeding Vin into their safe house and their entire operation had hung by a thread in the early days of her recovery, where her consciousness seemed to elude her, he’d understood. Even when he’d grabbed Kelsier by the shoulder and demanded an explanation, anger and worry boiling in his eyes, he’d understood.

Something twists inside Kelsier like a knife, something that feels suspiciously like guilt and regret. 

“I did not intend to put any of us in danger, least of all the girl.”

Dockson smiles a tired, tight-lipped smile and looks towards the fire slowly burning in the chimney and away from Kelsier. “I know, Kell. I just wish-”

He stops himself with a start, but Kelsier immediately picks up on his discarded thoughts and gestures for him to continue, not one to ever let things go.

“I wish you weren’t so eager to follow her path,” he says, and he looks at him again. “I do not want to watch you throw yourself into the fire time after time, Kelsier. You’ll get burned at some point. You know this.”

Kelsier’s eyes grow wide for a second and his mouth twists in a pained grimace, an almost imperceptible gesture if one hadn’t been watching his body language with a fiery devotion for years as Dockson had. 

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he says, waving a dismissive hand as if to clear his early statement from the air. 

Kelsier stops the hand mid-motion, gently, and holds it, bringing it to his lips and pressing a small, tender kiss on his knuckles, and Dockson feels the air leave his lungs even now, even after so long.

Kelsier does not apologize, or try to argue against his words, because he knows he can’t. He does not ask for his trust, because he knows he has it. But he does look at him imploringly as he says his next words, as if attempting to sear them into Dockson’s very soul.

“I love you,” he says. 

Dockson kisses him. Kelsier does not let go of his hand and it hovers awkwardly in the space between their chests, finally curling into a fist on the front of Kelsier’s shirt. He breaks the kiss and looks the other man in the eye and there’s something desperate in the general aura of self-confidence he always carries.

“I love you,” he says again. “I always loved you, Dox. Tell me you know this.”

“What’s wrong, Kell?” Dockson manages to ask before Kelsier quickly kisses his growing frown away.

“Just tell me you know it,” he says.

Dockson’s eyes flash in worry and confusion, but he turns his head to press a kiss against the palm Kelsier keeps on his cheek anyway, where his thumb idly strokes his beard.

“I know.”

Kelsier nods in relief once, and he presses his forehead briefly against Dockson’s, and then kisses it, and his cheek, and his lips once again. He has recovered most of his composed facade once they separate, and the smile he flashes at Dox is more cheeky than the moment perhaps warrants, which earns him a raised eyebrow from the shorter man. 

“Anyway, Ham has some fresh new thoughts about our quest here that he was itching to share with Breeze. I think they were in the kitchen last I saw them. I think we should join in.”

Dockson smiles and he’s slightly surprised to discover it does not feel as forced as he thought it would.

“Otherwise we could just follow the trail of empty wine cups to find that soother,” he points out. 

Kelsier barks a short laugh and rises, straightening his clothes and shooting a warm, tender look at Dockson, who remains seated.

“Come on,” he urges before walking out of the door.

Dockson takes a second to rub his eyes and sigh wearily, cursing himself with no real intent behind it not for the first nor the last time for having been unable to walk away from Kelsier all those years ago. He follows after him not five seconds later. 

……………..

Kelsier’s body hits the ground. There is a resounding crack and a noise that reminds Dockson of that of whips as the Lord Ruler’s hand moves, a noise from another lifetime, and then Kelsier’s body hits the ground. Someone screams by his side and there is a blur of motion, and then a strong, broad body is pushing him, urging him to walk, to move away.

His eyes are locked on Kelsier. 

He cannot see his face with his head turned at an unnatural angle, but he sees his limp hands and the scars that look more pale than ever in contrast with the pool of blood rapidly forming under his body, and a wave of nausea racks him. 

_ Get up _ , he thinks, he would have screamed if his throat didn’t feel like lead inside his body, or if he could move at all.  _ Fucking get up, Kelsier. Please. _

The Lord Ruler turns towards him, trying to spot the source of the scream he heard, which probably came from Vin, and then he smiles. It’s a cold, cruel smile, not born out of malice, but out of the comfortable knowledge of his unquestionable superiority.

_ I killed your Savior _ , he seems to say.  _ What will you do now? _

He extends a foot and places it under Kelsier’s motionless chin, or what was left of it, and then he turns his head so that it faces towards him.

A body covers Dockson’s line of sight immediately.

“Do not look,” Ham says.

Dockson’s ears are buzzing loudly, so loud he thinks he’s going to pass out at any moment, and Ham shakes him by his shoulders.

“Dox, are you listening to me?” he says, his voice loud in panic as he’d rarely heard him sound ever before. “We need to go.  _ Now. _ ”

“Kelsier,” Dockson manages to croak out. “We need to get Kelsier.”

Ham’s face cracks in a grimace of pain that he does not bother masking and he shakes his head.

“Let’s go,” he says, hurriedly pushing Dockson, who trips over his own feet and lets himself be carried, already feeling his body responding to his surroundings on his own, the endurance he’d had to equip himself with after a youth spent in a plantation and an adult life in the criminal underground kicking in. 

_ Kelsier _ , he thinks again, and he turns. 

Ham puts a hand on his head to stop it from turning just before he leads them both away from the corner, pushing through the shuffling crowd that scrambles away from the square as quickly as they can.

“You don’t need to look, Dox,” he says, and the words he does not speak are louder than even the most terrified of screeches around them.

_ Do not let your last memory of him be this _ .

A wounded noise of desperation leaves Dockson’s throat and Ham is kind enough to look away. They run, and he tries not to feel like it’s a betrayal.

He doesn’t quite succeed.

  
  
  


Vin walks into the room in her usual, stealthy way and startles Dockson.

“Dox,” she says, and hesitates, wringing her hands together. 

“Yes?” he replies, turning towards her.

Vin’s eyes widen in something like surprise at the flat, tight tone of his voice, and something like a bitter laughter gets lodged in his throat. 

She expected him to break, they all expected him to break. He’d seen the concerned glances Ham kept shooting at him as he directed the group with a straight back, following the orders left by Kelsier on a note, and had seen Breeze’s confused frown as he tried to decide which emotions to soothe on him, as if to keep him uptight.

He wants to wave their concerns away, but acknowledging them meant facing the events that started all of this in the first place, and Dockson thinks he would sit down if he did so and never get up again. There’s an emptiness, cold and insumortable, building up in his chest, compressing his throat and muddling his thoughts and turning every second into a struggle not to succumb to it. He knows he’ll give himself up to it at some point.

But now, Kelsier had left him work to do. And he will do it for as long as he has strength left.

“Vin?” he asks again when no reply comes from the girl. 

She looks disgruntled, more than usual, and her eyes are wide and wild. She’d been there. She’d walked up to Kelsier. She’d seen what had been left of his face. 

Dockson wanted to scream.

“He- he left a note.”

Dockson nods curtly. “I’ve seen it.”

Vin shakes her head.

“No. He left a note. For you.”

She extends two sheets of paper folded quickly and tied with a leather strap.

The penmanship on the front of it, detailing Dockson’s name, is unmistakable. His breathing stops for a moment and he looks up at Vin. 

“He made preparations.”

Dockson nods and doesn’t really say anything. He doubts there is anything to say.

“He made preparations,” Vin says again in a quieter tone.

"Yes," Dockson replies, and there is an edge to his voice, something wild and desperate, as if imploring someone to prove him wrong, someone to bring a heavily wounded but breathing Kelsier into the building for him to scream at.

No such thing happens.

Vin turns to leave the room but she stops and looks back at him from the doorframe.

“He left a note for me too,” she whispers and he has to strain to hear her. “He says he would talk to Mare about me. He says- he says she always wanted a daughter.”

_ Of course he did _ , he thinks.

“He cares- cared for you, Vin, very much so,” he says quietly, and she takes a deep inhale of breath.

“I’ll leave you to your note, Dox” she says, and, after a second, adds, “thank you.”

He does not read it right away.

He sits, turning it between his hands, looking at it at odd angles, and imagines Kelsier’s restless hands around it, scribbling on it, folding it in its irregular shapes. His fingers, long and slender and scarred, closing around the paper as he ties the leather around it to bind the several pages together. 

He opens it and he doesn’t register the words on the paper, not at first. He looks at the handwriting, the swirling letters scribbled with an almost obnoxious elegance, and the way all the words are crammed together on the margins of the paper, as if attempting to squeeze even the last bit of use out of the paper. 

It’s unmistakably Kelsier, through and through. He could almost see him, bent over the paper with a slight frown of concentration. He was a quick reader, but he rarely ever wrote. He didn’t have the patience for it, he said, when Dox used to gently tease him for asking him to write letters for him. 

Something, like a scream, or a sob, or a plea, gets lodged firmly on Dockson’s throat as he gets assaulted by memories of Kelsier years ago. He remembers him with legs crossed over Marsh’s desk, watching Dockson forge documents for their latest scam, which usually took hours because Kelsier kept invading his lap, peppering him with kisses and small bites and roaming hands, until Dockson gave up and kissed him hungrily. Dockson’s working schedule for the evening usually went awry after that. 

_I’m only sorry to have ever caused you pain,_ the letter said near the end of the second page _. I wish I could spare you from this. But I hope you can one day forgive me_ _and remember me as I used to be. And as we were, together._

Dockson closes his eyes and he does not raise his hand to wipe away the single tear that falls down his cheek and loses itself into his beard. He does not move but to continue reading. 

_ I wish for you a long life, _ it went on, _ and a future in which I fade into a pleasant memory, and a promise that you’ll see me again, once you’ve done and lived all you deserve to live. _

_ I would have been lost without you. I would have died in that wretched place when they took Mare had it not been for you. I would have let myself die. But I am selfish and stubborn. And I wanted to see you again. _

_ You were a better ally, a better friend, and a better lover than I had any right to ask of you. You understood me like no one ever had, not even her. You saw all of me, and yet you stayed, and loved me.  _

_ I cherish every second of my life I gave you. I’m coming to the end of my borrowed time now, and I do not regret a single one of them. I’m grateful and honored that I get to take these memories with me.  _

The letter ends soon after that, and Dockson finishes it as if in a daze. His hands shake around the paper uncontrollably and the very act of breathing hurts. His fingers trace the letters on the rough paper, trying to follow the same traces Kelsier had, to feel the ghost of his touch.

There is a sentence added in small letters at the bottom of the last page as if it was an afterthought, something that had been added when the other pages had been almost dry already.

_ I would have liked to marry you too _ .

…………..

One of Dockson’s favourite things about Breeze is that he never tries to hide his presence.

He’s leaning against the balcony of the former Venture Keep, now turned King’s Residency, in one of the upper towers, when he hears the soother approach. Sundown approaches and, with it, the mists that obscure the bustle of Luthadel. But for now, the empty spires of Kredik Shaw stand, as imposing as they ever were, against the red sunlight. 

The former Lord Ruler residency stands in a small elevation of the terrain from where all the city could be looked upon, although Dockson suspected the intent was actually to grant every noble keep visual contact with the cathedral, as if to remind them whose eyes were fixed upon their backs and their constant presence.

And now Dockson, a skaa, stood on the only noble keep that had been left unemptied, watching scornfully upon the bones of the Final Empire’s heart. Kelsier would have said something witty about this situation, he’s sure. 

_ Or he would have called us all madmen for giving the throne to a Venture _ , he thinks, and the idea feels like bile in his throat. 

Vin thinks Dockson’s difficulty to establish a warm relationship with Elend spite, Ham and Breeze think it prejudice, and Clubs - he has no idea about Clubs’ opinion, or if he even has one. 

The boy is a decent young man, as far as he knows, and he can’t really pin any fault beyond those he is owed by birthright to him, which is exactly the problem that drives him crazy most of the time. 

He thinks - he knows - Kelsier would have understood his reticiency. Except, of course, if Kelsier hadn’t allowed that wretched creature to spray his brains against the cobblestones where dozens of desperates now held rituals in his honor, he wouldn’t be having this inner debate in the first place and Elend Venture would have never been king. 

That’s when Breeze’s nonchalant voice reaches his ears. 

“Does your face ever hurt with all the brooding you do?” 

Dockson glances at his long-time friend and finds him dressed to the nines, holding a walking cane he has never needed and displaying a small smirk on his lips. Usual Breeze uniform, as Vin calls it behind his back.

Dox nods in greeting. “What brings you here?”

“The view?” Breeze offers half-heartedly, and Dockson raises an eyebrow at him in amusement. And then, to his surprise, Breeze’s smile recedes a bit. 

“The anniversary is in four days,” he says, fixing his eyes on the horizon as well.

It takes Dockson a second to take a breath and reply.

“As incredible as it may seem to you,” he says, “I haven’t forgotten.”

Breeze makes an unimpressed noise and waves a gloved hand in his direction.

“Those monks that harass Vin whenever she sets foot outside the Keep are preparing something, I think. Some kind of ritual in the Survivor’s square,” Breeze mentioned, making a face at the name of the square where the fight had happened nearly a year ago, indicating what he thought of it.

Kelsier would have found the grandstanding in his name endlessly hilarious, Dockson thinks. 

“I’ve heard their preaching,” he replies, quietly.

He feels his friend’s eyes digging into his side, watchful, and he’s once again reminded of the sharp insight and intelligence under the cheerful, uncaring facade he keeps at all times. Breeze revolved around understanding of others as a vital part of himself and he could not be separated from his incessant drive to see through anyone’s walls. It was hard not to feel uncomfortably exposed with him sometimes. 

“Are you soothing me right now?” he asks.

A corner of Breeze’s mouth turns upward. 

“My dear man, do you even have to ask?” he replies with levity.

A comfortable silence falls around them as they watch the first swirls of mist crawl into the land on the horizon, leisurely. 

Dockson wasn’t sure when or how the other crew had found out about his relationship with Kelsier. He had no recollection of telling any of them. It seemed as if they had, somehow, always known. He recalls Kelsier coming back from a reconnaissance mission on one of the first jobs they’d all done together accompanied by Ham - long ago, back when Ham still attempted to dress like a normal person with normal physical needs and when his animosity with Breeze was very much real - and how he pressed a quick kiss to his lips, unthinking, in lieu of a greeting. He remembers watching the crew from the corner of his eyes ot gauge their reactions and being shocked at finding none beyond a smug grin from Breeze. 

Breeze’s voice, uncharacteristically gentle, breaks the silence. 

“We found some work to be done, you know,” he says, “a quick trip to Fellise that will only take one or two days, something of minor importance but that Elend needs done apparently. And we are quite busy these days.”

Dockson turns towards Breeze with a small and tired but genuine smile. 

“We?” he asks, with a raised eyebrow, and delights in the way the soother’s confident words stumble and his cheeks redden.

“Yes, yes,” he says with a dismissive energy as he attempts to recompose himself quickly, “Hammond and I, yes.”

“I am glad to see you have… learned to see eye to eye over the years,” Dockson replies and he finds his words are heartfelt. “Kelsier kept threatening to knock some sense into the both of you with his fists if you couldn’t do it by yourselves.”

Breeze chuckles, his blushing receding ever so slightly. “He would have broken his knuckles against Hammond’s skull, anyway. There is no one more thick-headed in the entire Central Dominance.”

Kelsier’s memory hovers in the air between them and they sober up, as if reality had found a crack in the comfortable, friendly bubble they had hidden in and pushed its way in.

“The thing is,” Breeze continued, “you have a way out of the city for the next few days and we figured you might appreciate it.”

Dockson does. He really does. The idea of seeing dozens of people parade around, chanting Kelsier’s name and exalting a deified and distorted image of the man that was so radically different from the person that Dockson had known and loved - still does - that it feels like a mockery made him sick to his stomach in many ways. That’s why he bargained his way out of every meeting the King had with the leaders of the Church. 

But Kelsier had left a distinct, vibrant mark on Luthadel just as he’d done on Dockson himself, and no amount of running would change that. His name would endure, and so would the ghostly memory that haunted Dockson’s periphery and followed his every step, the memory he carried in his heart every day and into every new choice he made. 

He shakes his head at Breeze, who nods as if he’d known in advance what his answer would have been. 

“I think I have to see this through,” he says.

“I will tell the King to send Spook in your place, or someone else,” Breeze says.

The soother turns to leave and suddenly Dockson speaks, surprising the both of them.

“Do you think he would have been proud of what we’ve done?” he blurts out.

Breeze turns towards him inquisitively and taps his index finger against his dueling cane in thought. 

“Well, he threw us into the leadership of a kingdom and for the most part we’ve kept it from self-imploding for almost a year now, so I don’t imagine he has much room to complain.”

Dockson shrugs. “I suppose so,” he replies, and Breeze detects his unconvinced tone but does not press the issue further. 

“He loved you, Dox,” he says all of a sudden as he crosses the threshold to walk back into the Keep, and Dockson perks up. “You must know this. Despite what happened to him at the end, he really did love you.”

Dockson closes his eyes and does not open them until the echo of the steps of the soother has faded into silence.

_ I do know it, _ he thinks then,  _ and it somehow makes it worse. _

Kelsier had been arrogant and prideful, and with an excessive knack for grandstanding. But he’d been loyal and honest and his affection had been earnest. He had loved Dockson, and he had known it, he still knows it now, even as his memory turns into something for the public to pray to and to toy with, and the precise tone of his voice and the way his accent curled around the hard consonants get harder and harder to recall with precision every day. 

But Dockson had been there. He had seen it. And when Kelsier’s body had hit the ground, he had been smiling in relief and satisfaction. He had died because he had wanted to. And he did not know if he could ever forgive him for that. 

But he would try. 

**Author's Note:**

> there is a criminal lack of content of this pairing so i thought i'd make my own. if you're reading this, thank you for making it to the end!


End file.
